Word: parthenon
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...London's Underground (subway) to hide from German bombs had classical company. Workmen last week began removing some $16,000,000 worth of ancient heroes & heroines from an offshoot of the Underground station. The ancients were the British Museum's famed Elgin Marbles, plucked from the Parthenon (in 1801) by Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin...
...night Athens was awesome. The darkness which engulfed the city was periodically pierced by flares parachuted by the R.A.F. to reveal ELAS troop movements. The floating flares also revealed the Parthenon in a new, glowing beauty. The Acropolis was again a fortress. Under cover of night British paratroopers descended on the historic (and once more strategic) eminence, found it unoccupied. All round them was ELAS-land, but the skytroopers were confident they could hold the precipitous heights against any assault. The only troops which had ever taken the Acropolis by storm were the Persians...
...hills of Athens echoed and re-echoed to the boom of bombs. Against a sullen sky loomed the Parthenon, monument to the ruin of Europe's most serene civilization. Across it flashed the shadows of strafing Spitfires. On the sides of the Acropolis and in the streets of Athens, where British soldiers and Greek Leftists stalked each other with Tommy guns, were the ruins of the hopes born of liberation. Splashes of Greek and British blood slowly clotted on the pavements. Athens, where the word democracy (from demos, the people) first achieved political meaning, was a battleground...
...That is, by World War II. In 480 B.C. the Persians partially destroyed the Acropolis; in 86 B.C. Romans under Sulla plundered it; in the 17th Century, Acropolis temples were damaged by both Turks and Venetians. In 1801-1816, Lord Elgin carted off a large part of the Parthenon's remaining sculptures, sold them to the British Government for London's British Museum...
...Parthenon dynamited in Athens...